Wee Ginger Dug: We need to stop fighting with each other and focus on the real issue – Hard Brexit

OVER the past couple of weeks, Scottish social media has been particularly obnoxious. That’s quite an achievement, because even at the best of times Twitter is like wading through a sewer of syrup of stupid in wellies filled with the waste you put in the food recycling bin after it’s been left to ferment for a fortnight in the sun.

There are some people who apparently devote their entire contribution to Scottish politics to finding things to be outraged by on Twitter. Entertaining as this might be, it’s a distraction from the real issues facing us.

It’s time we focused on the seriously noxious waste that’s heading down the pipeline and is about to poison us all in a far worse and far more serious way than: “He said something nasty on Twitter”.

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This week, just as you thought that the UK’s Brexit plans couldn’t get any more confused and damaging, that’s exactly what they did. Brexit is increasingly resembling that barrel that you scrape the bottom of, only when you’re scraping away there you can hear the sound of a Brexiteer underneath preparing something even more gobsmackingly stupid.

It’s rather like Twitter in that respect come to think of it. The difference is that Brexit is going to cause damage way beyond some hurt feelings.

A report by the think tank the Centre for Cities, based at the London School of Economics, claims that out of all the cities in the UK, it’s Scotland’s cities that stand to do worst from Brexit.

In particular, the economy of Aberdeen is going to take a serious hit. £500 million could be lost from the Aberdeen economy annually if the UK goes for the hard Brexit which seems to be the preference of the UK government and the Labour leadership. Even in the best case scenario of a soft Brexit, the Aberdeen economy stands to lose £284 million a year. Aberdeen will be, by quite some margin, the worst affected city in the UK.

Glasgow and Edinburgh won’t escape damage either. Every one of the 20 UK cities examined in the report stands to see its economy damaged by Brexit. However, Scotland’s cities will lose out by a greater extent than the economies of northern English cities which voted to leave. This is because, according to the report’s authors, Scottish cities are more integrated into the European economy. The damage to Scotland from a decision to leave the EU will consequently be greater. All of Scotland’s cities stand to lose out by greater than the UK average because of a decision which Scotland rejected by a considerably larger margin than the margin by which it decided to remain a part of the UK.

Despite what the Tories like to claim, there is no such thing as a good Brexit. There is no such thing as a Brexit which works for all parts of the country. It seems, according to the report from the Centre for Cities, there is not even a Brexit which works for any part of the UK. Brexit, even a soft Brexit, is going to be damaging for every part of the UK, but Scotland stands to lose out even more. So much for those broad shoulders of the UK that Scotland can rely on.

The early part of the week was dominated by chlorinated chickens, and whether Liam Fox would allow them into Britain as part of a trade deal with the USA. That would be a trade deal that the UK isn’t allowed to negotiate until after we leave the EU. A mass outbreak of angry clucking ensued, as it was pointed out to Liam that the consequences of reducing food safety standards would mean that British food could no longer be exported to the EU, the country’s major market.

After fending off the attack of the angry chlorinated chicken during the week, on Thursday the Tories announced their plans for post-Brexit immigation, only it turned out that no-one had told the Foreign Secretary or half the cabinet. After Michael Gove and other senior Tories had confidently assured the press that the cabinet was united on allowing freedom of movement to continue for an interim period after 2019, up pops Home Secretary Amber Rudd to say it wouldn’t be.

Incredibly, while all this is going on, while the Tories are wandering around in the Brexit maze blindfolded and guided by nothing more than Boris Johnson’s wish for a magic unicorn, the Labour party manages to be even more confused on what sort of Brexit it wants than the Tories are. Out-idioting Boris Johnson is possibly the most embarrassing political achievement since Tory Secretary of State John Redwood mistook the TellyTubbies theme song for the Welsh national anthem. It would, at this juncture, be useful to give a summary of what Labour’s position on Brexit it, but I haven’t got the foggiest idea of what it is. But then, neither does the Labour party.

Meanwhile the EU’s chief negotiator is warning that it seems increasingly unlikely that talks between the EU and the UK will be able to progress on to the nature of the post-Brexit relationship because of a failure by the UK to deal with the issues around the divorce. The chances are growing that the UK could fall out of the EU without any deal at all, with all the chaos which would ensue.

The promises made to Scotland by Westminster during that fevered summer of 2014 are revealed as meaningless and trite as a Twitter dispute.

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